


Magnetism

by linguamortua



Series: 90 Minute Timed Writing Challenge - May 2015 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Past Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3944749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>‘I’m out,’ the Soldier says, sounding confused. ‘Of the—’ his hands make a lopsided square shape in the air.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>‘Helicarrier?’ Brock asks. ‘Out of the Triskelion? When it went down?’</i>
  <br/>
  <i>‘No,’ says the Soldier, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to Brock. ‘Out of the box.’</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magnetism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asocialconstruct](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/gifts).



> Written in 90 minutes from a prompt submitted to me as part of a self-imposed timed writing challenge. asocialconstruct said: 'I'd love to see your version of Bucky-as-WS or Bucky + Rumlow post-CATWS'.
> 
> You can add me [on Tumblr](http://lingua-mortua.tumblr.com/).

The worst thing about hospitals is that they’re never truly quiet, even at night. There’s always some crisis happening, screaming or crying or clattering gurneys, or just the hurried shuffle of feet towards some frenzied beeping. In the burns unit, it’s mostly crying. In Brock’s case, he can hear the armed guards outside his room, too; the odd leathery creak of boots, or the rattle of adjusting gear. S.H.I.E.L.D may be a husk, but they still managed to dredge up a handful of heavies to rotate through the day and night, keep an eye on him. With no weapons and skin that feels two sizes too small he’s hardly a threat, but he supposes that until they manage to shove him into a cell they want eyes on. They stick their heads around the door every couple of hours, sloppy and undisciplined in a way that makes Brock want to whip them into shape. Upheaval is no excuse for disorder. Brock has risen each day at 0700 – as marked by his internal clock – since two days after his skin grafts were stitched in place. No excuse at all.

He looks remarkably okay, given the circumstances. The skin grafts are tight and shiny and his arms and chest are criss-crossed with tiny, spider web scars. His legs are better, but the backs of his thighs were taken apart to repair his face and neck. His cheeks and neck are still swelling a little but he’s recognisable when he looks in the mirror. The saturnine good looks that he was rather proud of have been abruptly taken from him but he’s not a monster or a freak or anything. It’s okay. It’s just okay. He tells himself that he looks like a grizzled old soldier. He has pretty good range of movement still, so soldiering is still an option. He fully expects HYDRA to break him out. He has value.

So why can’t he still his mind? Combat breathing, five-in- _hold_ -five-out- _hold_ , doesn’t help. He stares at the shadowy ceiling, listens to the hospital sounds and tries to ignore how he’s itching. He feels switched-on, as he would in a quinjet waiting for a drop: focused with an anxious, foreboding edge. So, when there’s a tiny click at the window to his left, he’s immediately aware of it. No weapon, no defence, no back-up. The only thing he can say is that he isn’t still hooked up to an IV or seeping fluids from under his abused skin. He slides his legs free from the light sheet covering him and curls his right hand over the mattress edge, ready to propel himself sideways. The city lights outside waver as a human body moves and obscures and reveals them by turns. Then the window clicks again and a black-gloved hand is pushing it carefully inward, keeping the frame intact to hide forced entry. The figure is just visibly wearing tactical gear, heavy boots and a mask, but he – and it is clearly a man - lands almost silently on the floor, dropping into a smooth crouch when he clocks Brock watching him.

‘HYDRA or S.H.I.E.L.D?’ Brock says under his breath. Instead of replying the figure starts to stands and a metal arm glints in the dim light and Brock thinks _Fuck me, fuck me, it’s him_.

‘Neither,’ whispers the Soldier, and he stands to his full height and walks towards the bed.

‘Guards outside,’ Brock tells him softly and carefully rolls his legs over the edge of the bed. The Soldier nods. ‘How are we getting out?’

‘Out?’ asks the Soldier with a quizzical little tilt of his head. There’s a long, awkward pause, the likes of which Brock is quite sure ass-kicking action heroes never have to deal with.

‘We’re getting out of here, right?’ Brock asks. _Unless he’s here to kill me_. Of all the peculiar responses, the Soldier gives a huff of a laugh, a short, sharp breath in the quiet room.

‘I’m out,’ he says, sounding confused. ‘Of the—’ his hands make a lopsided square shape in the air.

‘Helicarrier?’ Brock asks. ‘Out of the Triskelion? When it went down?’

‘No,’ says the Soldier, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to Brock. ‘Out of the _box_.’ He looks at Brock, but the room is yet too dark to see his expression. Brock leans over and presses the palm-sized silicon button on the wall by the head of the bed, and it starts glowing blue-white, a tiny nightlight. It throws the Soldier’s face into chiaroscuro angles and planes. _He’s handsome, actually_ , Brock thinks, although his hair is scruffy and in desperate need of a wash, and he’s got heavy stubble on his face. His mouth would be called sullen, sulky like some pouty kept boy, but his eyes – his eyes look ancient with pain.

‘I thought you were my get-out-of-jail-free card,’ Brock says. ‘My extraction team,’ he clarifies.

‘I have no current mission.’

‘No safe houses up?’ Brock asks, but he already knows the answer. In some bone-deep way, he’s been avoiding the same fate.

‘I won’t,’ says the Soldier, looking fierce and forlorn at once. ‘I won’t.’

‘Okay, you won’t,’ Brock responds amiably. ‘So why are you here?’

‘You’re like me,’ the Soldier says, and there’s a question in his voice.

‘Yes,’ Brock says, as encouragingly as he knows how. ‘Yes, we’re both HYDRA.’

‘ _No_ ,’ the Soldier grits out between his teeth, and Brock hushes him with his hands, jerks his head towards the door.

‘Keep the noise down, buddy,’ he says. ‘I’m like you… because we’re both soldiers?’

‘We’re,’ begins the Soldier, a furrow appearing between his brows. He scrutinises Brock, perched on the edge of the bed in loose cotton boxers and a papery, hip-length hospital tunic which doesn’t stick to his wounds. ‘You were different.’

‘I got burned up pretty bad,’ Brock says, nodding.

‘Before,’ says the Soldier. ‘You had a gun.’

‘Had a lotta guns,’ drawls Brock, amusing himself.

‘Black boots,’ continues the Soldier, ‘And goggles.’

‘Okay, we both had guns, black boots and goggles. Lots of people have those.’ The Soldier screws up his face and hits the heel of his metal hand against his temple. ‘Jesus!’ Brock hisses as quietly as he can. ‘Knock it off! You’ll mess yourself up.’ The Soldier stops.

‘There were technicians,’ he says, concentrating. ‘And missions. Targets.’ His face slackens with fear, like a child expecting punishment, and he says, barely audible, ‘Pierce. Him.’

‘Pierce is a weasel,’ Brock says. ‘Or rather, was a weasel. He’s dead now.’

‘Dead,’ breathes the Soldier.

‘So,’ says Brock in a big exhalation of breath. ‘We’ve got Pierce, and mission targets, and technicians, and us.’

‘Yes,’ the Soldier says fervently and grabs his wrist. ‘We have to run. We have to stick together.’

‘Don’t disagree, but why?’

‘So they can’t put us away again,’ the Soldier says urgently. ‘So they can’t put us back in the box.’

 _Christ Jesus_ , Brock wonders with horrible anticipation.   _He thinks I’m an asset, too_.

‘Yeah,’ he says slowly. ‘Yeah, I’m not sure HYDRA boxes appeal to me, either.’

‘Good,’ says the Soldier with unnerving finality. His body draws up, sets itself into a state of relaxed readiness. Like a puppet, being tugged gently upward by a string through his crown. There’s a long stretch of silence. The Winter Soldier stares straight ahead, calm but alert. Brock sits and thinks of the many and creative ways that HYDRA could deconstruct him for skipping out on them. His life is really fucked up, now that he’s had several weeks of leisure to contemplate it.

‘You smell godawful,’ Brock says, suddenly.

‘The river,’ explains the Soldier. ‘And the fighting.’

‘That was weeks ago, buddy,’ says Brock, wrinkling up his noise. ‘Get in the bathroom.’ He gestures with one mottled hand to the narrow door on the far wall. The Soldier doesn’t question, he just goes straight there, leaving the door open. Brock stands slowly, unsticking a small patch of bandage on his thigh from the sheets. The Soldier is sitting on the closed toilet lid, straight-backed. His palms are resting on his legs and he watches Brock patiently. Brock turns on the taps, pulls the little lever to drop the plug. The outside door opens and he steps out the bathroom, pushing the door closed behind him. _Calm_ , he tells himself.

‘Up to no good, Rumlow?’ Brock recognises this guard, a bovine, burly fellow who wouldn’t recognise a threat if it kneed him in the kidney.

‘Can’t sleep,’ he lies. ‘Cool bath should take the edge off the itching.’

‘Whatever,’ the guard shrugs. ‘You want a bath at four in the morning, you be my guest.’

Brock holds his breath until he’s back in the bathroom with the door locked. The bath’s already half-full; it’s not large but there’s hot water and cheap, pink soap in the dispenser on the wall.

‘Get in,’ he tells the Soldier, and then forestalls him with a hurried hand when the man steps towards it fully-clothed. ‘Clothes off, man, come on. You know how washing works.’ The Soldier shrugs, lining up his impressive array of weaponry along the back of the sink. He strips down with lithe grace, marred somewhat by the acrid smell of old sweat and stale river water. Brock can’t help himself and reaches out to touch the livid pink scar that marks the join of flesh and metal. The Soldier pauses in undoing his belt and turns to look at Brock, upper body and head moving together. ‘Okay,’ Brock says, hands raised defensively, ‘It’s okay.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Just curious,’ replies Brock.

‘The technicians touched me,’ the Soldier says pensively, removing his socks by pulling each foot up to his waist rather than bending over.

‘Not the same, I bet.’

‘Not the same,’ agrees the Soldier. He’s naked now, muscular and scarred.

‘Get in the tub.’

The Soldier slops water over the side when he gets in. His knees are bent up ludicrously but he slides himself down the tub so the water’s up to his chin and looks satisfied.

‘It’s warm,’ he says. He looks at Brock, who stares back.

‘What, man, you need me to wash you?’ The Soldier blinks at him. ‘You actually do. You actually need me to wash you. Jesus.’ He sits on the edge of the tub and reaches for soap, wincing as freshly healed tissue pulls at the back of his right shoulder. The soap is pearlescent in his palm, artificially floral. He lathers it into the Soldier’s hair. ‘Like this, you big baby,’ he chides him, holding himself back from a nervous giggle with some effort. _The goddamn Winter asset_ , he thinks, _eats misbehaving HYDRA rookies for breakfast_. Under his hands, the Soldier rumbles in his chest.

‘Warm,’ he repeats in a mumble.

‘You couldn’t find running water since the Potomac?’ Brock asks, but there’s no sting to it. The guy’s just sitting there, scarred up and broken and leaning into his touch like a hurt child. Brock grabs a plastic cup off the side, rinses his hair, and rubs his face with water. The Soldier’s eyelashes clump together around startling blue eyes. Brock grabs his hand, guides it to the soap dispenser and pumps it a couple of times.

‘Wash,’ he directs, and in the bathtub, the most dangerous assassin of the past half-century starts lathering soap along his arms and chest, watching the bubbles form and pop. It’s oddly engaging viewing. Brock almost feels touched. _He’s like a kid_ , he thinks. _A kid that kills people, Brock. Probably don’t lose sight of that._ Still, he feels drawn to the Soldier, compelled to throw in his lot with this deeply broken human. When you get right down to it, Brock didn’t have a whole lot more free will in HYDRA.

‘We need an exit strategy,’ Brock muses later as he helps the Soldier buckle on his ammo belts and holsters again. _Oh hell, hellfire and damnation, I’m actually going to leave with this fucked-up bastard_ , he thinks.

‘Kill the guards,’ the Soldier supplies, helpfully. He makes towards the bathroom door.

‘Wait!’ Brock says, sounding strangled. ‘We’re in the middle of a very large hospital. We can’t shoot our way out.’

‘Window,’ the Soldier says, but he looks at Brock’s tattered arms, his still-bandaged thighs, and sounds doubtful.

‘Drag the guards in here,’ Brock suggests. ‘Dispatch them, stick them in the bathroom, take their clothes?’

‘Passable,’ agrees the Soldier.

‘Got a spare piece?’ Brock asks, and the Soldier selects one from his hip and hands it over grip-first. ‘This’ll do nicely. Had one like it myself.’ It looks well-maintained, but he checks it over automatically anyway and takes the handful of clips that the Soldier proffers. ‘Are you ready?’

‘I’m ready,’ says the Soldier and he reaches out slowly, deliberately, and takes Brock’s free hand in his own for a moment. ‘Let’s run,’ he says.


End file.
